Ten Plus Times
by gabs88
Summary: Leah reflects. One shot.


**Title: **Ten Plus Times  
><strong>Author: <strong>gabs88  
><strong>Pairing: <strong>Arizona/Leah and solo Leah  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Leah reflects a little  
><strong>Rating: <strong>M. Something in that area.  
><strong>Disclaimer: <strong>All characters belong to ABC/Shonda Rhimes. This story is not for profit and made purely for entertainment value/I needed some fluff.  
><strong>Author note: <strong>Wrote this randomly one night, thought I´d share.

**Ten Plus Times**

**The first time,** I had given up on it happening. She gave me that horrible speech after I had embarrassed myself talking about her all day to people who didn´t even care and I blurted way to much personal information at her then fled to the girls bathroom.

Like a fifteen year old.

But then I was sitting in the bar listening to Steph talk about her perfect boyfriend and my phone went off at ten thirty at night on a Wednesday.

Basically, she booty called me.

I knew what this was.

I went to the bathroom and stared at my reflection and gave myself a pep talk.

¨You will not do what you did with Karev.¨

I stared back at myself and tried to believe what I was saying.

¨You will not do what you did with Heather.¨

My fingers dug in to the cool metal of the basin as I forced my face in to the relaxed look I had trained myself to carry whenever her name came up. I´d practiced for a full day after she died, until I could say her name and keep everything that I felt clamped down to only a flip of my stomach.

I slipped out of the bar by claiming a headache to Steph and was in a taxi and at her place faster than was probably considered cool. She answered the door and her mouth was on mine and we were in bed and she pulled me on top of her so I was straddling her hips and naked already when she suddenly pulled back like something had just occurred to her. Her fingers were buried in my hair, her nails delicious against the skin of my neck and her eyes looked at me intently.

¨Is this your first time with a woman?¨

I smiled at her and slid down her body, the movement of my tongue and fingers showing that no, it really wasn´t.

That night was not only the first, but the first and **the second**. And it was incredible. She was incredibly attentive in bed and confident and, despite some of the thoughts that had ran through my mind, her missing a leg barely changed a thing. If her speech that afternoon hadn´t sunk it in, it was clear when we were finished, side by side against the pillows, breathless and me with a stupid smile on my face.

¨It´s getting late…¨

And I, knowing that not so secret code, turned my head and smiled at her, dressed in a hurry and disappeared, like she wanted me to.

She was amazing, and fascinating, and incredible and she could draw me in with only a look. I don´t know what it was about her, but I think part of the problem was she caught me before sex. I opened up and because I´m so used to being shut down when that happens, and she didn´t do that straight away. So I had started to fall before the sex. And then she shut me down but then she had sex with me. I´m not naive. Not completely. I went to her bed that night after hearing every word she had said. I went knowing it was just sex. But, wow, could she be warm and soft and inviting. She was a surgeon of intimidating skill but when her clothes came off or you gave her a glass of wine and a pretty face, she could melt anyone.

But Jesus, could she be cold and frigid and make you feel as small and insignificant as a nobody.

I knew what it was.

The **third and fourth** time were two nights later, after she spent her time freezing me out at the hospital to hammer home the point of what this all meant to her. She was at Joes and so was I and we ended up in the bathroom and then again, much later, at her hotel room.

Again, the point was made and I slipped out in the early hours of the morning.

And so a pattern begun

I knew what it was.

Three more days in a week (**fifth, sixth and the seventh) **and I appeared when she messaged. I never approached her. I went when she called. I knew, like everyone at the hospital, that she had tried, and failed, to get her wife back. I was a distraction and, in a way, despite the feelings I couldn´t smother down that I knew were pointless, she was also a distraction for me.

Heather dying did so much damage.

**The eighth**, exhausted and, despite the promise I made to myself and the coldness she showed me at work, comfortable in her bed, was the night I fell asleep before I could leave.

I should also say, despite herself, she had grown softer. It wasn´t always just sex, and I hadn´t lied when I said to her I felt like I had finally met someone who finally got me. We talked, and we laughed. Despite herself, I think she liked me. Not like that. _Never_ like that. There is only one person, for her, like that. I would never be Callie. But that night, we had laughed and talked and the sex was softer. We had not rolled apart like we normally did when we finished, but she lay on top of me, drowsy, satiated. We were warm and sweaty and flushed and we both fell asleep.

In the morning I did that thing I do, and caught myself watching her as I had once watched another. I looked at the delicate curve of her shoulder, watched her even breathing and found myself staring at her face. She was gentle in sleep and I couldn´t help but compare this woman to the one I found drunk in a closet, and helped to bed when she was even drunker, and then to the woman who spent a night kissing me to tell me the next day it was nothing right before asking me over in the middle of the night, and then to this woman who throws herself into sex with me while trying to reconcile with the wife she cheated on and then cold shoulder me by day.

This woman is a conundrum. I think she is even to herself.

I tried to creep out of bed but she rolled over and, following the shift that I had felt since yesterday, offered me breakfast.

I fled as fast as I could, despite how much I wanted to fall in to her, amazingly perfect when just waking up.

I knew what it was.

**The ninth and the tenth** were the night after I was bitten by a zombie and the following morning. I could barely move my arm from pain, and I was HIV free, and she showed me a side I had not yet seen from her. She gave me a speech and she showed me she cared and, though I knew I shouldn´t, I felt a glimmer of hope. I went home with her that night, we even left together from the hospital, and she put me to bed and then, exquisitely, made me come with her tongue so I barely had to move and repeated it in the morning, and I returned the favour after she dosed me with pain killers.

It wasn´t until after the **eleventh** time, when my neck lac was better and we both almost passed out, we celebrated that hard, or the **twelfth**, in the shower, that I started to realise the rumours about her and her wife had almost stopped. I started to think maybe she had stopped trying.

I started to think maybe.

I still knew what it was.

I´m not normally liked. I´m brash and tactless and I say what I think and sometimes I don´t let myself get close to people and other times I let myself get far too close far too quickly.

Karev is an example of that.

Heather is an example of something I don´t want to think about.

Arizona began as an example and then I got myself together and challenged myself. I wouldn´t come out of this as the embarrassed girl who threw herself at a person and was dropped without a backwards glance. I would go into this as an adult and emerge unscathed.

She made me feel liked. Sometimes she laughed, like she actually found something I said funny. She didn´t just pull me at her the second I knocked on her apartment door anymore, we usually had a glass of wine and talked.

She was still cold at work, but after the zombie, she tried a little harder.

The **thirteenth** time started at the hospital, and then we realised we really need to go to her hotel. I pulled a pillow under her hips to get an angle that I had learnt made her lose herself, and the results left to us having to order more pillows from room service as we laughed about the fact that this was not the first time it had happened. I was sprawled on my back and she was leaning back on her elbows, rolling her eyes at something I said and I was grinning because she had actually made a joke about losing feeling in her feet and she only has one, when she realised she´d have to get up to get the pillows. Considering she was registered as one guest, Arizona always answered the door to room service and this meant she had to get her prosthetic on to stand enough to open the door. I knelt in front of her, naked, and helped her adjust the straps.

Her fingers were brushing the hair behind my ear and her look was something I hadn´t seen before when the knock rang out in the room. She smiled and I fell back on the bed while she answered the door, a robe pulled on, and then I heard _her_ voice and I felt my breath freeze.

I scrambled up and pulled the sheets around myself and stood with my back against the wall and my heart hammering as I heard every word that Callie said.

I couldn´t even be surprised when she sat down on the bed and told me I should leave.

I had always known what this was.


End file.
